On our last afternoon sailing down the coast of Spitsbergen Island of Svalbard, our ship repositioned from our morning position at the point on the Hornsund Fjord where it meets the Burgerbukta Fjord – Gnålodden – to an “anchorage” near the far end of the Burgerbukta Fjord (where the fjord actually splits into two bays, Vestre Burgerbukta and Austre Burgerbukta, with tidewater glaciers pouring down the mountainsides into each bay). The best way to explore the area was in hour-plus-long Zodiac boat tours, providing us an opportunity to get up fairly close to the tidewater glacier faces and to sail through the icebergs and ice floes which proved to be very photogenic. We were very sad at the end of the cruising to realize that this would be our last encounter with the fjords, glaciers and icebergs, as that evening we began the long sail to the south to reach the northern tip of Norway and the city of Tromso, from which we had embarked on this remarkable journey in the Arctic.

Burgerbukta Fjord, Spitsbergen Island, Svalbard, photograph #10 – a double hanging glacier; note that as the front edge of each glacier is pushed forward and melts, the falling ice can create dangerous situations for any boats too close to the cliff edge!